A 10-year-old died after he fell into a manhole. Shéa Ryan died from “a head injury with drowning” at a Glasgow, Scotland, construction site. This happened on July 16, 2020, around nine to 10 PM local time, according to a police report published five years later.
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How A 10-Year-Old Boy Died From Falling In A Manhole
According to the police report shared on July 30, 2025, and obtained by PEOPLE, Shéa and a group of other children found the manhole open. Noticing the ladder, Shéa tried to climb down before he slipped.
The boy fell around 20 feet to the bottom of the manhole, which had water inside. On the way down, he hit his head, causing the head injury.
When the other children didn’t hear from Shéa, they fled to get help. Graeme Paterson, Shéa’s stepfather, soon arrived on the scene, a neighbor later joining him. The distressed stepfather climbed down in an effort to find Shéa, only to see no sign of him.
After some searching, they found Shéa submerged in the water a short distance away. Paterson, with the help of the neighbor, pulled Shéa from the water to find him “unconscious and unresponsive.” Despite their attempts to resuscitate Shéa, they were unsuccessful.
Police Call Out Construction Companies As Allegedly Responsible
The police report also detailed how this tragedy happened during a time when the company that owned the construction site, Amey Black & Veatch (ABV), had temporarily transferred ownership to a different company, RJ McLeod (Contractors) Limited (RJM).
This may have had something to do with the avoidable death of this 10-year-old boy. It claimed that ABV failed to communicate risks with the construction site during the transfer.
It also said that ABV failed at taking “reasonable and sufficient measures to prevent unauthorized access” to the site. This played a part in the kids being able to enter the dangerous site.
ABV employees then allegedly removed a “heavy ballast bag” full of building materials off the manhole shortly before the temporary transfer to RJM. This left the manhole open, which they did not communicate to RJM about.
To add more fuel to the fire, ABV allegedly failed to disclose that there were previous trespassing incidents by children. The report noted that RJM often used to visit schools to teach children about the dangers of trespassing on construction sites.
Things changed after the COVID lockdown, when RJM was unable to continue its school visitations. This tragedy was just three months after the first April 2020 lockdown.
Police believe that Shéa’s death could’ve been easily prevented if RJM had performed routine safety checks. “The accident resulting in Shea’s death might realistically have been avoided,” it wrote.
PEOPLE explained that these findings were a part of a report, led by Sheriff Stuart Reid, as part of a fatal accident inquiry (FAI). An FAI is used to establish the facts on what happened during an “unexplained or suspicious death,” according to the Crown Office & Procurator Fiscal Service.
Its purpose is to prevent any future deaths under similar circumstances. Hopefully, this FAI will help stop any more children from accessing construction sites to protect their lives.